State of Emergency
by Tantilla
Summary: Those with unfortunate circumstances are often drawn to those with worse circumstances than themselves.
1. Chapter 1

Tororo closed the door behind him as he entered his rather small house. He leaned back against the door and closed his eyes, letting out a deep sigh. Work had not been particularly taxing that day, like it ever was for him, but for some reason he felt dead on his feet. He had spent most of the day in front of a monitor and programming. None of the heavy lifting he sometimes had to do when he had to help actually put the dam devices they were making. He was great at both, but honestly he was grateful that he got to spend the day on his ass.

He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. Maybe he would call it a night early tonight? He could get some food, maybe check his email, then go to bed early. That must be it. He had to have been running himself ragged with all of these late nigh arguments he had with random internet n00bs. He just needed one good night of sleep and he would be ready to go. He put his glasses back on and headed in to the kitchen to rummage around in the fridge. Yeah, sleep. That sounded like a wonderful idea.

He grabbed himself a snack and headed over to his bed, pulling his laptop up on to his lap and turned it on. He was almost instantly bombarded with a message when it finally finished loading. It was from Kururu. Tororo took a bite of his food before setting it aside and accepting the chat invitation from 'The Yellow Devil'.

"What I can't relax for five minutes after getting home without you messaging me?" Tororo demanded, moving to pick up his food again. He could just type with one hand.

"What? Would you rather I just completely ignore you? Ku ku ku~, you know you would have been messaging me the moment your slow ass computer booted up anyway." Kururu teased.

"Fuck you Kururu. I'm not as starved for your attention that I need to be talking to you every moment that I can."

"Oh, feisty. Whats got you in a bad mood _squirt_?" Kururu questioned him. He always wanted to know what Tororo was up to. He never said anything about what he was doing though.

"Nothing just... I'm really tired. I was just gonna check a few things and go to bed. Of course you had to come in and ruin my plans." Tororo grouched. "What do you want anyway?"

"What? I can't want to say hi to my FAVORITE tadpole in the whole universe?"

"Puu pu pu pu, yeah. I believe that Old Man. How do I know you haven't gone pedo on...whats his face? The freak who shoots lasers out of his mouth. Taruru's in love with him."

"Tamama? Hah, tempting. Hes not QUITE as much of a fatass as you are. Nowhere near as annoying either."

"Wow, thanks Kururu. You have now made me afraid to check my email. What if its filled with messages from assholes like you? I think you have already filled my quota for tolerating assholes. Probably for my whole life."

"You should just go to bed then. Actually, I doubt that you have any messages anyway. Who would want to talk to talk to you?"

"Look who's talking." Tororo huffed and rubbed at his eyes. He couldn't deal with this right now. "Look. I'm going to bed OK? I might talk to you tomorrow when I feel like I can handle your bullshit."

"Yeah, OK whatever. I guess I will see you tomorrow Squirt."

"Hate you, Old man.

"Hate you to."

Tororo typed a heart after that, but as he expected, he got no response for it. He knew it was stupid, and pointless and cheesy as fuck...but it was something that they did. Well, Something that they USED to do. Now only Tororo did it, and Kururu just seemed to ignore it for whatever reason.

Tororo tried not to think on it as he closed his laptop lid and threw away what was left of his food. He was used to it, but even then it still kinda hurt. Whatever. He was just being an asshole...just being Kururu. He sighed and took his glasses off, setting them on a nightstand beside the bed. When he laid his head down on the pillow, he groaned quietly. There was never a better feeling than finally laying down after being exhausted for so long. He yawned and closed his eyes, and soon he was fast asleep.

* * *

A loud an obnoxious ringing jostled Tororo from his sleep. The world was dark around him and the only thing he could see was a blurry red outline of his clock. He reached over and grabbed his glasses, putting them on and looking around for the source of the horrible ringing noise. Oh, It was the Phone. Tororo scooted over in his bed and grabbed the Phone. After fumbling with it for a moment, he managed to get it to work and put it to his ear.

"...Hello?" He asked, a half yawn making its way in to his words.

"Tororo, I know its late but I need you to get down here as quickly as you can." His boss's voice came through the phone.

Tororo mentally groaned in agony. This happened quite a bit. He was always making late night runs for his boss and fixing something up. Most of the time he had no problem with this, as it meant extra money and he was normally already awake, but he was trying to sleep. Still he sat up and went about gathering his stuff.

"Why? Is there something going on?" He asked.

"Its very important that I talk to you as soon as you get here. Come quickly."

Tororo sighed and nodded to himself. This DID sound serious.

"Yea...Sure alright I will be there soon." He said before taking the Phone and hanging it up. Fuck. He whined quietly to himself and tried to think of how this could be taken as a good thing. He could think of nothing...

* * *

Tororo KNEW that He had no reason to fear going in to his Commanding officer's headquarters. He had done nothing wrong. It was just some instant reaction he had whenever someone who outranked him at his job wanted to talk to him. They must have found out about something bad that Tororo did at some point in his life. Maybe they finally found out that he used to write people's papers for them for money in the training academy. One of his past teachers must have contacted them or something.

No, now he was just being stupid with his worrying. There was no way that they could find out about anything like that, and if they did they likely would not care about it. He had not done anything for the past month and a half so they had no reason to be angry at him. That WAS mainly due to the probation they had put him on for the next two months…maybe Tororo would LIKE it if they yelled at him for something. At least that would add a little bit of excitement to his recently dull life, even if he hated getting yelled at.

Even with this knowledge locked firmly in his head, he could not bring himself to enter his employer's office. He spent about 10 minutes just standing in front of the door, almost willing it to open and invite him inside. This of course did not happen, and he just stood there looking like a complete moron in front of all of the other employees that went up and down the halls. Tororo did not care what the others thought though. So he continued to stand there for a bit longer. He peered in to the small window on the door in to the room that he was supposed to be. His boss was not busy, simply typing away at his computer, waiting for him to come in. It got even more awkward when his boss looked up and actually spotted him staring in the window. They locked eyes for a moment, caught in some sort of trance.

Finally his boss threw his hands up, motioning for Tororo to get his ass in the room. Tororo quickly complied, closing the door behind him when he got in to the room.

"What the hell were you doing standing out there?! I needed you down here 15 minutes ago!" His boss yelled at him. Yep, Sure enough. Tororo had been right that he would get yelled at. Although it seemed to JUST be because he was late.

"Pu….Sorry . I uh…Just got here. I had some problems at the house and ran a bit behind." Tororo lied. "I tried to get here as quickly as I could though. You said it was an emergency?"

Dorere nodded and pulled up a few files on his computer before turning the monitor to face Tororo. Tororo sat down in one of the chairs that Dorere had in front of his desk and looked at the information that the monitor showed. It seemed to be schematics of some kind for what looked like battle armor.

"We got a call from the hospital this morning, requesting immediate assistance with one of their patients. He is in stable but critical condition and will not survive without our help. Honestly it seems like a miracle that he is even still alive. They have kept him alive thus far but they give him about a week at longest with the support that they have available to him. They have tasked us with building this lucky survivor an entire new half of a body, to replace the one that was lost." Dorere explained, pointing to several pictures of the schematics for the new body that they had been tasked with building.

"…and you want ME to build it?" Tororo asked, a bit confused as to why Dorere wanted only him to work on this.

"Well you are one of the more skilled employees, and I know you have the basic medical training that will be needed to actually get the robotic half to connect and really take to the actual living half. Plus I know you have been asking for more challenging work. I have not simply been ignoring your requests Tororo, simply waiting or something that could actually pose a challenge to a gifted mind like yours."

Tororo was honored…but he was also a bit nervous. Yes he had wanted something more challenging to work on in his spare time, but this was NOT what he meant. This was a LIFE or DEATH situation, and this poor frog's fate rested in his hands! What if he failed? What if he made a dumb mistake and ended up doing more damage than good?

"I will do my best…" Tororo droned out, saying his response in a completely unthought-of way. His boss nodded and pushed a flash drive in to the computer he was currently working on and began loading files on to it.

"Now I know that this task will take up most of your time, so don't worry about coming in to work until the task is done or…of the patient expires. Whatever comes first. I have already arranged with the hospital to give you access to what all you will need to get the patient suited up with a new body. And of course you will be allowed to SEE the patient and actually work with him." Dorere said as he wrote down a bit of information on to a sticky note. "He is at Life West hospital, on the other side of town. "

Tororo nodded and reached out with shaking hands to take the sticky note, and next the flash drive once his boss had finished uploading all the information about the schematics for the body he would need. Once he had those two items, the boss turned back to his computer and began typing again, but Tororo just sat there, waiting to see if there was anything else. After a moment Dorere glanced at Tororo and motioned for him to get out. "Shoo! Get going you moron! I called a cab for you 20 minutes ago! It should be here any moment!" He ordered. Tororo jumped up and ran out of the room.

* * *

Tororo was at his work desk, loading tools in to his box that he would be bringing with him to the hospital. His hands were shaking so badly and he almost dropped several screwdrivers as he put them in to the box. So many possibilities were going through his head. So many things that could go wrong. He could incorrectly connect a single wire and who knows what would become of the poor patient that he was supposed to be helping. He could kill him, or WORSE. The more he thought about it, the more he felt things would go wrong.

He had no time to stop and REALLY think about it though. He was on a VERY strict deadline and he had yet to even begin. It's not like he could just say no anyway, not like anyone else would take the job up in his stead. He WAS the best there was when it came to engineering and programming. Well, maybe except for…Fuck. He wished he had Kururu here with him. He would know what to do in a situation like this. That asshole was off on some far off planet, trying to take it over.

"….Dumbass…probably won't even be able to take it over…."

Tororo huffed and slammed his tool case closed a bit harder than necessary. Today had just been to stressful for him. It was the middle of the night and now he had to worry about saving the life of some complete stranger. He did not need to worry about his asshole boyfriend, or whatever he considered Kururu to be. Not with all that he had on his mind. He shook his head and hissed quietly to himself before snatching up his tool box before heading for the door.

This wouldn't be a totally awful experience at least. Even if the patient DID end up dying, at least he would get to see one of the nurses that he really liked there. What was her name? Pururu? Yeah that sounded right. She seemed to have an abundance of lollipops for children, but she always gave one to Tororo when she had seen him. Maybe he could work with her, and maybe she could explain things to him a bit better than his boss had. Yes, Tororo DID have medical training, but it was nowhere near as extensive as that of a nurse or a doctor. He would of course need help with making sure that he was doing everything right and taking care of the patient.

It was cold this time of year, but Tororo had not thought to bring anything really warm to wear since he did not think he would end up standing outside waiting for a slow ass cab. He jumped up and down, breathing on his hands to keep them from going numb. It was such a relief when he finally saw the glowing headlights in the darkness that was the cab, coming to whisk him away to some hospital. He got in almost as soon as the cab stopped and handed the driver the sticky note that his boss had given him. The driver nodded to him and headed off down the street.

Tororo sighed in relief and slumped down in the seat. He was still so tired, but he figured he would not be getting good sleep any time soon.

He just hoped THAT wasn't what would make him screw up. God he hoped he didn't screw up...

* * *

**OK! So, I know I started that one KuruToro story however long ago...but I'm not gonna finish it. I lost all inspiration for it and don't even remember what I had going on in it. I much like ZoruToro better now anyway...**

**The LOVELY Cover for this story was created by Tororoplz on Deviant art.**


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed that the hospital security did not appreciate people without proper identification walking around with a trunk full of tools. In fact, they downright despised it.

Tororo had TRIED to explain to them that he was still a bit too young to have proper keronian identification, but they had denied that. They said that if he was old enough to work at a hospital, he needed to have ID to show it. The thought that Tororo may have been some sort of young prodigy never even crossed their simple minds. Tororo supposed that he probably SHOULD have asked his boss for some form of ID, fake or not, in order to do this job. It was required that one be over a certain age to work within a hospital, but that seemed to have slipped both their minds.

Now Tororo was locked in a security office, some big burly guard blocking the door like he expected Tororo to actually try and make a break for it. Instead Tororo just sat there, waiting patiently like he was instructed to and eating all of the complimentary snacks that they had set on the table, even if they had been put there more so for the guards than himself. He helped himself. It was the least they could do for wasting his time like this on such trivial things. His patient was probably in the next few rooms over or something dying right then. No one could really blame him at least.

Tororo eyed the guard that continuously stared at him like a bird eying it's pray. He puffed out his cheeks and looked around the room, and the guard stiffened up. Tororo laughed at that.

"Wow, you take your job WAAAY to seriously, security guard. Really, I can't even call you an asshole cop, because you're not a cop." Tororo teased, watching the guard's face contort in a new level of anger and shame with every word he said. "Sorry, Sorry its probably not your fault. Your boss probably built up you ego making you think you had a bigger impact on the world than you really do." Tororo rambled on, enjoying the way he guard's emotions changed so quickly. He had no clue how much longer he would be stuck in that room, so he figured he might as well entertain himself, even if it was at the expense of someone else.

The guard clenched his fist and hissed quietly under his breath. For a moment he looked like he was going to say something to Tororo, or maybe pummel him in to the ground, but he never got the chance. The door opened and a familiar face stepped in. Tororo sighed in relief and stood up, opening his arms for Nurse Pururu to give him a big hug, which she gladly excepted.

"Finally, Someone who actually knows what the hell is going on in this hospital!" Tororo muttered under his breath, shooting a glare at the guard that had been keeping him in there for what he guessed was about half an hour.

"Sorry about the inconvenience. We JUST got this patient in, so not everyone has been informed of your special task, or that your actually allowed to be working here. Give them a few days and they should stop bugging you." Pururu explained, nodding to one of the doctors that had followed her in. He handed Tororo his trunk of tools that had been confiscated from him.

"Well yeah, I guess they WERE just doing their job, but still, they couldn't have called someone up and checked to make sure that I wasn't supposed to be there before throwing me in the brig like that?

"standard policy if someone could be a threat to any of the patients. Now, Speaking of patients, You need to be briefed and get to work! We have the patient stabilized at the moment, but we are not sure how long we can actually keep him alive on the support we have." she said, leading Tororo out of the security office and down the hall. The smell of medicine and old people filled Tororo's nostrils, and made him feel disgusting; like he was sick to.

"Yeah, from the schematics of the machine that you want me to build, it looks pretty serious. What happened to him?" He asked.

"We're not really sure HOW it happened, because so far we have not been able to find any eye witness's, or even find out the identity of the patient. Give us a few hours and we should have a name for him at least. Anyway, He was found under a collapsed tree, his entire left side crushed under the weight of it. With his head crushed so badly, its an absolute miracle that he is even still alive. If he does manage to survive this, I have no doubt that he will never be the same again. Severe permanent brain damage at best, death at worst." She informed, picking up a clipboard with more information on his condition from a nurse's desk and handing it to Tororo.

"Heh, You sure death is the worst case scenario? If we can get him fixed up to some form of a functioning level, how do we know it would be worth it? It could be horrible for him." Tororo said as he read the form.

"It may end up like that Tororo, but at this point we are in no position to be making any decisions for him.. We have him stable and until he dies, can make a decision for himself, or we have someone he knows to make a decision for him, we legally have to at least attempt to save his life." she grabbed Tororo's hand when he started to lag behind and pulled him along the hallways of the hospital. He had been here a few times before, but he had never been down this way.

"So what do you want me to build first? I wont be able to make it all at once you know." He said as Pururu led him in to a rather ominous looking room. It had glass walls all around and a tile floor with a drain in the middle. He was about to ask where they were before shower-heads came on and began pelting them with water that was just a bit too hot for his taste. Pururu began to scrub him down with a scratchy type of sponge, acting as if she did this every day.

"Well it would be best if you could construct what will be the new half of his head. Something that can function in place of a brain. That will be incredibly vital in order to get the rest of his body up and running."

"Yeah i- OW- ...I guess that makes se- FUCK PURURU STOP!" He yelped, swatting at her. She was scrubbing him down way to hard. He understood that this was some sort of sanitization, but fuck there was no need to be rough about it!

Finally Pururu set the sponge down and the showers turned off. She tossed Tororo a big white towel from a rack just on the other side of the shower and dried herself off. Tororo followed suit and headed out of the room when they were done with their sanitization. Now Tororo understood where he was. He was in the 'If-You-Bring-Germs-In-Here-You-Will-Kill-Everyone' part of the hospital. The stakes really were high for this patient weren't they?

Pururu slapped a medical mask on to Tororo's face and a pair of gloves before leading him off down the hall. At first Tororo felt like a fucking moron for wearing them, bu the feeling quickly left him when he saw that everyone had to wear them in this wing of the hospital. She led him down a few winding hallways and down one elevator before they finally reached the room that they were looking for. Before they went in, Pururu turned to Tororo.

"I forgot to ask, are you squeamish?" She clasped her hands together, acting like this was not an important piece of information to get earlier.

"...No not really. Depends on what I am looking at I guess. If you're talking about guts and what not, or blood, yeah I can handle that." Tororo said, trying to picture what sort of body horror could be waiting for him on the other side of the door.

Pururu nodded a bit and adjusted her gloves , sighing heavily before opening the door.

The first thing that Tororo noticed was a horrible smell of drying blood. It was so thick that he could smell it through his mask, and it made him cringe a bit. He took a few hesitant steps in and got his first look at what the would be working with for the next while. An adult, gray Keronian. Or half of one anyway. His entire left side was missing, and what was left was wrapped in bandages that seemed to be the only things keeping what was left of his organs in him. How WAS he alive?!

"...He is dead right?" Tororo asked, completely shocked at the sight before him. "He HAS to be dead. There is no way its possible for him to be alive."

"Well...Yes and no. He has no pulse, he DOES show signs of brain activity though, and even a few of his organs seem to still be active for some reason. We have no idea why this is happening...its medically impossible..but here it is." Pururu explained, pure wonder in her voice, like she saw this as some sort of experiment instead of a life on the line.

"Even if he is still alive...He wont be for long unless we get him a new body." Tororo almost groaned. Now that he was actually looking at the patient, he realized that he really was the only hope for this poor frog. He held his life in his hands. "...Fuck I have to get to work!"

Pururu grabbed Tororo's hand and pulled him over to a workspace that had been set up for him in advance. He would need to work in there to get measurements right and making sure that everything would work just fine with the remainder of his body. A few moments later a doctor came in wit Tororo's tools in a nice new, sanitized, tool box. The tools were also cleaned. When he was handed the tools and the schematics for what he needed to create, he froze for a movement. Where to start, how to get this done as quickly but efficiently as possible. What if he failed?

Tororo watched as the doctors scrambled around to make sure that the patient was still in stable condition and he realized something; he did not have time to worry. He had to get this done or this patient would die, no doubt. He glanced at Pururu a moment before letting out a shaky sigh and setting his stuff down on his workbench. He could do this...right? Pururu patted him on the shoulder.

"He is in your hands now Tororo."

"Thanks Pururu..."

**Enjoy my slow ass uploading of short ass chapters.  
**


	3. Chapter 3

Tororo was sitting next to a body. This thought kept popping in to his head every time he tried to work on the first part of the mechanical body he was building. He kept glancing over at his patient and the monitor that was keeping track of different organs that seemed to fluctuate from functioning to being in a more vegetable like state. He had to keep reminding himself that this frog WAS in fact a living body.

The smell of blood was so thick around him and it nauseated Tororo. Every now and again, Doctors would come in and he would watch as the doctors carefully replace the blood stained bandages with fresh clean ones. That would help with the smell for a short while, but eventually the smell would return. The body wasn't rotting, luckily, just smelling like blood.

It was the worst when Tororo would have to get close to the patient's head to make sure that he was welding the metal to the right shape and size. He had already had to restart three times due to his discomfort with getting close to the body. He had come to terms with the fact that it would be inevitable though. He would have to get used to this, and fast.

He had only been there for about twelve hours now, but he was already regretting not getting nearly enough sleep the night before last. Really he could go for about 3 days straight without sleep, but he was worried that he would slip up and make some sort of fatal mistake in this new half for the poor frog sitting next to him. This was advanced stuff. How was he supposed to program this thing to function as the other half to a BRAIN?! Pururu was right, this frog would never be the same as he was before, whatever that was. He would be lucky if he had all of his motor skills...Hell he would be lucky if he lived through this whole thing. Especially with someone as incompetent as Tororo working on him.

"Heh...Sorry if I like...You know...Kill you." Tororo mumbled, not even glancing at the body while he said it. Its not like it could respond, or even hear him. It was just way to quiet, and Tororo needed to do something to break the quiet. The only other thing he had been listening to for the last half hour was the quiet squeak of a screwdriver and the occasional scraping of metal when he tried to make sure something would fit together properly. He was quiet impressed with himself. With his rather limited tools, he had still managed to make a frame for the new part of the head in a decent amount of time. It was simple and rather plain to look at, but it would get the job done. Getting this guy's head back in tact was the number one priority at the moment. If they couldn't do that, they might as well not even try to save the poor bastard. "I mean it's not like it's all my fault if you die!...Right? Anything could go wrong really... Heck you might just die before I can even get this damned thing finished."

Silence filled the room again and Tororo did not feel any better. He had gotten no reassurance, not that he had expected any, and he knew his guilt would kill him if he screwed this up somehow. He just hoped that if the half corpse DID die, that he died due to his injuries and not some error in the wiring or the coding.

The main shell of his head was done now, the correct size and all. He needed to put everything that would make it function as a brain in it now. He knew what all he needed to put in it to make this work, it was all in the schematics, but he was still worried about messing something up. He could get some wires mixed up or something stupid like that.

Maybe he was just worrying to much? Maybe he just needed to take five and calm down a bit before he worked on this project any more. It really wasn't good for him to be worryi-...Where the fuck was his laptop?

"Shit...Shit shit shit fuck where is it?!" HE mumbled to himself franticly as he searched around the room for it. No..No this was pointless. He hadn't brought it with him had he? No, it was back at his house FUCK.

Calm down, Calm down. He could get his laptop, he could get the code in to the blasted

Tororo set the completed had frame down and glanced around. The door was clear so it was actually rather hard to spot in this lighting. He got up and headed out in to the hall. Doctors ad nurses went by as they hurried to their critical patients to make sure that they had not passed away since the last time they had checked on them. It seemed to be a never ending cycle of worry in these halls. Tororo slipped out in to the halls and took a deep breath. It stunk incredibly badly, like someone had dumped an entire jug of hand sanitizer on the floor and used it to mop. Still, it was nice to take a break from the smell of drying blood.

He made his way up the hall and to the nurses desk that stood in the center of the lobby. He leaned over the desk and asked one of the nurses to borrow a phone. They agreed and handed him one that he could use right there.

What a shame. He was going to be in a hospital for who knows how long, and he likely wouldn't get many chances to flirt with any of the nurses here. Whatever, its probably for the best. Kururu would throw a fit if he found out about Tororo flirting with anybody. God he was such a hypocrite...

He called up a friend that he could at least SORT of trust to be let in to his house without him there. He KNEW that he could trust Taruru in his home, but he quickly found that he may have just been better off getting someone who might have stolen a few things to get him his laptop, if only because it would have taken less time for him to get his laptop. Instead he spent about 20 minutes explaining to him where he hid his key and where he left his laptop. It wasn't that Taruru was stupid per-say, but he was very easily distracted and tended to get off task at the drop of a pin. Normally Tororo would have had more patients for this sort of thing, but the fact that he was tired made him a bit cranky.

It was only when he got the confirmation that Taruru was on his way with his laptop did Tororo sit down and take a short breather. He just took a moment to sit and really think about what needed to be done since he finally got a moment where he wasn't in a constant whirlwind of trying to figure out what needed to go where and how things were going to need to be placed in to the shell he had created. Taruru would get here, he would give him his laptop and he would be able to get everything set up to actually help the un-crushed side of his patient's head function. The poor bastard wouldn't be able to hear, or see...or really think all that much at first. Really he wouldn't be able to do ANYTHING except well...be alive. Tororo could get movement and his senses working later when he would actually need them. He wouldn't need them if he was dead.

Tororo was constantly wondering how exactly his patient ended up like this. How did he go and get himself crushed under a tree? If he had to guess just from the shrouds that served as an alternative for the hat flaps that most Keronians wore, his patient was likely an assassin of some kind, probably a student. It must have been some horrid training accident...but why had no one called for help then? Pururu had said that it was a civilian that had found him under the tree. Maybe Tororo knew less about assassin training than he thought? Maybe this was some cruel act of punishment? The thought made him shiver and briefly mull over what other kinds of punishment assassins could have, and wonder if this was a merciful punishment. He realized he did not want to know.

Tororo shook his head a bit and leaned back against the wall. God he was tired. He would give just about anything for a short nap right then, but he knew he probably wouldn't be getting any sleep any time soon. Far to much work to be done. Maybe once he had the patient in better condition, maybe then he could spare a few hours rest. He wished Taruru was there with his laptop right then, because at least he would have something to keep him focused, awake and more importantly, productive. He might have been a super genius of some kind, but even he couldn't build half a robot body in his sleep. He had tried before.

When he felt himself dozing off again he groaned and got up. He couldn't be sitting down like this when he had nothing to do. He got up and walked around instead, looking around at the various medical equipment and peering in to the rooms of some of the other patients. They did not look quite as...severed as his own patient, but they did not seem to be in any better condition. He entertained himself with that for a while until a nurse yelled at him and told him to respect the privacy of the ill. Tororo just scoffed and continued on down the hall, muttering under his breath. "What privacy?"

It was true, its not like the patients had much privacy with nurses and doctors popping in every hour or so to make sure that they haven't killed over, and having nurses constantly monitoring every bodily function they had, barging in if something escalated or lowered a bit.

He wandered down the way that Pururu had led him when she first picked him up from the security office. He went around the sanitary showers this time and found himself back in he general section of the hospital, the part where he might have actually been able to get a cup of coffee. The nurses and doctors seemed much more relaxed here. In fact he only saw a total of about 3 or 4 actually making their way down the hall instead of the 10 or 12 he was growing used to. This place seemed much emptier. He wandered a bit farther down the hall and he began to smell the fain smell of coffee in the air. It seemed he wasn't the only one who was here way past their bedtime. He followed the smell, almost hypnotized by it until he found himself standing in front of a half full coffee pot. He made himself a cup and sighed happily. He did not remember a time that he wanted something more than he wanted this cup of coffee. It would keep him awake and help him build half of a robot body in his half asleep state.

He took a drink of his coffee, ignoring the painful burn in his mouth from the heat of it. It just woke him up a bit more.

A voice came on over an intercom and it took Tororo a moment to realize it was talking about him.

"Tororo, you have someone waiting for you at the front desk. Tororo, You have someone waiting for you at the front desk."

Tororo glanced up at the ceiling before sighing and taking a few more drinks of his coffee before tossing the small paper cup away and making his way down the stupidly long halls of the hospital to the front desk. He prayed that he had enough decency left in himself, despite the lack of sleep he had, to deal with Taruru's endless energy.

"TORORO!"

Nope.

"Tororo you ARE gonna let me see it right?!" Taruru asked, thrusting the laptop that he brought in to Tororo's hands.

"If by 'it' you mean my patient, then no." Tororo grunted his response and looked over his laptop and checked for damage

"Come oooonnn! Just one peak! You know I have always wanted to see a body!" Taruru whined, shaking Tororo a bit, stomping his foot in a childish way. Tororo thought about it. He COULD get in trouble for letting Taruru back there with all of his...germs...Then again, he WAS pretty much this hospitals only hope of his patient surviving. They couldn't get too mad at him.

"...Why should I?" Tororo asked as he started off towards the critical condition wing of the hospital.

"uhmm...Because I brought you your laptop? I didn't HAVE to you know!" He pointed out.

"You have to take a shower with me." Tororo teased.

"Ehehe, You know you have always wanted to take a shower with me Tororo! Don't deny it!" He laughed a bit and followed Tororo, excited to see a body for the first time.

"Yeah, Cause I so wanna see you in your natural habitat, Fish Face."

Taururu growled a bit at the name and smacked Tororo on the arm. The salmon colored tadpole just laughed at him and led him down the hall. Maybe he could use some of Taruru's energy...

* * *

**Bluh. Finished this at like 1 am so the end of it is probably crap. Shit will start happening...eventually i guess...**


	4. Chapter 4

"Oh come on Tororo! You not gonna let me touch it?! Not even once?!" Taruru whined obnoxiously loud as Tororo scrubbed him down in the mandatory sanitation room. He actually wasn't that dirty, much to Tororo's surprise. Taruru often had fluctuating fits of germaphobia. So he kept himself well groomed for the most part. Still he was required to give Taruru a thorough washing, so he did just that. He knew Taruru wouldn't do it himself right now since he was not having one of his bouts of paranoia, so he did it for him to make sure he would not bring any of his disgusting cooties in to the secure part of the hospital.

"No, I wont. Don't touch the body, don't touch the equipment, don't touch my shit. No, don't fucking touch anything OK?" Tororo said rather hurriedly as he finished washing the aqua frog in front of him and began giving himself a quick washing as well. He was a bit worried about the people handling his laptop and he wanted to get out to make sure they were not doing anything stupid with it while they sanitized it. "Just hurry up and rinse yourself off."

"Awwe, what is it Tororo? You don't like showering with me?" Taruru asked as he approached Tororo. Every step he took forward, Tororo took one backwards until Taruru had him pressed against the wall and he grinned lewdly at him. Once he was trapped, Tororo just rolled his eyes and continued scrubbing at himself with the body-wash that was provided in the large public hospital shower.

"No, I'm sorry Taruru. Showering with you is the highlight of ANY day for me. My ind is just elsewhere right now." He explained, sarcasm heavy in his voice. He was so used to the hollow flirting that Taruru would fling at him every now and again, it was practically routine. "Now if you will please get the FUCK off of me, maybe I will let you join me in a shower sometime. You know, as long as you are willing to face the risk of Kururu murdering you if he finds out."

"What? Fuck, Tororo are you STILL with Kururu?" Taruru asked, taking a more serious approach to the topic now. "What are you some sort of glutton for punishment that you don't even deserve?"

"Jeez, you make it sound like he beats me on a regular basis." Tororo muttered. He did not want to have this conversation right now. He tossed the scrubber on to the floor since he did not care enough to wall all the way over to the other side of the room just to pick it up before going and standing under the faucet that sprayed almost too hot water in to the room.

"He may as well be with all the times you come to me nearly in tears..." Taruru muttered under his breath.

"What was that?" Tororo growled.

"I said he may as well be! Hell, I cant count how many times you have come over to my place with tears about to roll down your face because he said something fucking awful to you! You even said that you were gonna break up with him last time that happened, but I see you failed to do so since your still dating him!"

"Hey shut up Taruru. You don't have ANY room to judge my relationship with Kururu when the one yo are in love with has labeled you as 'stalker'. Just back the fuck off OK?" Tororo snapped at him as he turned the shower off and went to grab a towel for the both of them.

"Oh come on Tororo, you cant be serio-..." Taruru started but he was promptly cut off by a rather irritated Tadpole.

"Shut up Taruru. I will do what I want. I love Kururu so just shut up and let me be with him. I don't need you breathing down my neck again about what is and isn't 'good for me'." He tossed a towel in to Taruru's face before he could say anything and quickly dried himself off before heading out of the door. He snatched his laptop up from the nurse who was standing there, waiting to give it to him before heading off down he hall in a sour mood. Taruru said a quick apology to the nurse before following him all the way to the room.

The first thing that Taruru noticed when he followed Tororo in to the room that he would be staying in for the next while was the smell. It wasn't a pleasant smell, and it was everywhere in the room, like someone had sprayed some sort of smelly gas I to the room through a vent. He groaned and waved the air in front of his face like it would actually help some.

"Tororo...fuck come on alright? Just calm down." He said as he followed him in to the room, watching him plop down angrily and boot up his laptop. "I just get worried about you sometimes and I...holy shit that's a body."

It took Tororo a moment to look up as he had begun typing something on his computer, but at least it seemed to calm him, as he wasn't outright glaring at Taruru this time. He even let out a quiet 'pu pu' for the first time since Taruru had shown up to deliver his laptop to him. That was a good sign. Tororo always calmed down a bit if he was on some sort of a computer.

"No shit dumb-ass. Isn't that what you came all the way here to see?" He asked, glancing over the body but quickly averting his eyes. He had seen enough of the body as it is for now, he did not want to look at it any longer than he had to.

Taruru on the other hand was awestruck. He looked over the body with a bit of morbid fascination and restrained himself from touching it like a good boy. Tororo had begun the horrid task of programming everything to do what it was supposed to, but Taruru knew that Tororo was keeping an eye on him, even if he wasn't looking at him directly. Actually, he realized that the disgusting smell going around the room was coming from the body. OK, wow that took a lot of the fun out of looking at dead things. Dead things was one hing, smelly dead things were another thing entirely.

He spent the next half hour just looking over everything about the body that he could. Once he realized that the body was not going to get up like it did in his comics and movies, it was really kinda boring. It was only made even worse due to the fact that Tororo was so busy with his coding bullshit. The one time he tried to bother Tororo to see if he wanted to take a break, the tadpole snapped at him and yelled at him that he was to busy to deal with his games and stuff. In the end Taruru had taken a seat in one of the visitor's chairs in the room. He would have left, but he felt somewhat obligated to stay after all the trouble he and Tororo had gone through just to get in here. He kept his eyes on Tororo for a while, watching him code and prepare various things he would need.

This was going to be a long night...

* * *

"You're going to use FIRE on his HEAD?!"

Tororo growled quietly to himself as he gathered up his equipment he would need. Oh god this was one of the most crucial moments in getting this patient a new body, and he STILL hadn't managed to get Taruru to leave. He was lucky that Taruru had yet to touch and break any vital equipment, or start spewing out the most deadly germs he had on him. He just had to make sure that he kept his mask and gloves on.

Honestly it wasn't THAT bad though. He hadn't done anything that couldn't be reprimanded with just a scold or slapping his hand away, and he seemed to have calmed down a considerable amount now that he had gotten nice long look at the body that he had been so interested in before. Now he was bored with it. Typical Taruru.

Tororo hadn't realized just how lonely he had been until the room had been filled with Taruru's consistent chatter and questions. He ignored most of them, but he did always keep his eye on him, and muttered a few words to him every now and again as he had been coding and preparing to attach a new half of a head to his patient.

It had been hard trying to code everything that would be necessary to have this thing run and actually provide for a living being. He knew it could be done on a much smaller scale, but creating a BRAIN was a bit different than attaching a computer to someone. He found himself constantly wishing that Kururu was there with him to help him through this, even though he was constantly trying to prove that he was better than him. This was not a situation that called for competition. If Kururu had been there he would have easily swallowed his pride for the sake of the patient. Sadly the only one here with him was Taruru, and the comfort he offered was limited at best.

It did not help that Taruru seemed to be a bit of a pyro.

"Can I help?" Taruru asked for the first time he had been there. The entire time he had been wandering around the room while Tororo worked and complaining about how there was nothing to do. Now he was offering to help, but only because he saw the flame from a blowtorch. He also had a soldering gun, a drill and a lot of nails. He wasn't about to hand something to Taruru that he could set things on fire with, or put holes in things with. That would be like handing Tororo snacks and telling him not to eat them.

"What? Fuck no, I want my patient to LIVE Taruru, not get third degree burns and die." He said.

"Come on! Tororo I will do anything OK! Come on! At least let me watch! You haven't let me get close since I got here!" Taruru pleaded.

Tororo shook his head and picked up the now filled shell that would be the patient's head. He had filled it to the brim with all the things that the patient would need to live. It was all bolted down and nothing moved or rattled, and honestly he was a bit proud of himself for creating such a thing. He was a bit worried about it though because it looked quite messy despite its stability. It would work at the very least at keeping the patient alive until he could come up with something better. He was sure the patient would rather look kind of messed up and be alive than be dead…then again, what would he care if he was dead?

Tororo shook his head and sighed, picking the shell up and heading over to the patient. He had still tried his hardest to keep his distance from the body due to the smell of blood it continued to give off. He was shocked at the fact that the body had not started rotting…then again, ALL of the doctors were shocked that the organs that remained were still functioning, barely keeping the patient alive. It shouldn't have been possible.

He took the shell and set it on a table beside the patient, looking closely at what was left of the wrapped up head that the patient still had. Taruru stood behind him a few feet, watching closely and almost bounced in anticipation. He had seen the body as it was all wrapped up, but he hadn't gotten to see any of its insides yet!

Tororo was less excited to see this. Half of a brain…fuck…he didn't know if he could do this. Well, he would have to. He could probably stand looking at it once he got started but…unwrapping it? The very thought of blood and brain matter sticking to the bandages as he pulled them off was enough to make him gag and feel like he was seriously about to throw up. The smell did not help. He could already see the blood that had seeped in to the bandages wrapped around his head, and he knew it was going to be a mess.

"Well?! Are you going to do it or not?!" Taruru asked after watching Tororo just standing there for a few minutes. Tororo groaned to himself and sighed, turning to look at Taruru, sizing him up and thinking for a moment.

"…..Taruru go wash your hands and change your gloves AND your mask…I need your help." Tororo muttered after a moment. Taruru stood there for a second before grinning big and running around the room as he looked for the supplies that Tororo had ordered him to get. He rewashed his hands and put on a fresh pair of gloves and a mask as well before going over to Tororo. Tororo seemed so nervous, he was almost shaking.

"Hehe, What do you need me to do ?" Taruru asked, rocking back and forth on his heels as he looked over the body.

"I just need you to unwrap the head. I don't think I can actually bring myself to do it…" Tororo muttered, going about grabbing new gloves and face masks for himself as well. He listened for a response form Taruru for a bit, but after a moment he only heard a fit of laughter coming from the aqua frog. He turned and shot him a glare, waiting for him to calm himself so that he could question him.

"What the fuck are you laughing about?" Tororo demanded.

Taruru took a few deep breaths and let out the rest of the giggles that he had trapped in him before he finally sighed and began to relax.

"Tororo are you _squeamish_?!" He asked a big grin on his face. Tororo just rolled his eyes.

"YES I am squeamish, and you would be to after sitting in here with a body forever half a day. Just the smell is horrid enough; I don't want to know what the insides look like. I'm sure you won't be any better once we get started, so don't you even laugh." Tororo snapped. "Now, wash your hands, get new gloves and a mask and get over here to unwrap this head. Don't you even THINK about touching anything inside or I will saw your hands off. I have the means to right now, so don't think I won't."

Taruru stared at Tororo for a moment, seeming to be sizing him up before he began following the tadpole's instructions. He disposed of his current gloves and mask before washing his hands and getting new sanitary equipment. He made his way over to the patient's body with enthusiasm. He was obviously quite excited to see this. It was just unwrapping it right? Why the hell would that be so bad? Tororo was just over reacting. Although the smell that wafted around the room WAS quite a bit stronger when he was closer to the body…. He could handle that though.

Tororo took a moment more to look over the wiring and everything that he had put in to the shell that would be the patient's new head. Taruru did have to admit that Tororo did a good job at crafting it. It looked like something that you could get at a store or something. It didn't look like it had any obvious way to attach it to the patient's head though, so he wondered how that would be accomplished. Actually, now that he REALLY thought about what Tororo was doing, he wondered why Tororo had not gone to get an actual DOCTOR to help him with unwrapping the patient's head. Instead he trusted Taruru of all people with the task. Even Taruru himself recognized that was a bad idea. Maybe Tororo's lack of sleep was getting to him more than he thought? Maybe it was clouding his judgment?

Tororo brought the robotic part over to the bed where the patient lay comatose and set it on a cart that he had beside the bed. He sighed and looked over the bloody bandages that covered almost all of the patient's head before looking to Taruru and nodded, signaling him to start. He stood back and watched over the process as Taruru began to gingerly unwrap the bandages from around the head. It was slow going, but Taruru almost immediately regretted agreeing to participate in this. After only the first two layers of gauze had been removed from the patient's head, the smell intensified to almost unbearable levels. It was strong enough to make the both of them gag, and they figured it would only get worse as they removed more and more of the blood soaked cloth.

This was not a smell of dried blood, this was a smell of decay. The patient remained very much alive (which STILL baffled all of the doctors) but parts of his body seemed to be slowly dying. Bits of dead skin here and there. It just showed how quickly Tororo would need to move in order to save this poor soul. If they could get the body up and running again, the rotting should stop, but it would still be painful for the patient. Well it would be if the patient were conscious.

Taruru let the bandages that he unwrapped fall to the side. Every layer that he removed let out an even stronger smell, and had more blood soaked on to the cloth. Finally, Taruru pulled away the last of the cloth, and the patient's head was exposed completely. This was not so dangerous on a germs matter since the entire room had been sanitized…. and sanitized…and SANITIZED again and again before he came in. No it was dangerous due to the fact that anything could get in to the head, causing damage to it. Tororo had the shell in his hand, prepared to simply get it on the head so he could begin attaching what he needed to and get this done. Now that it was actually time to take action though, he stood there staring in shock at what he saw. Taruru was no better, and he just stared intently at the exposed brain that he saw. He did not know whether to be amazed at how it looked or absolutely disgusted.

Finally, after a few moments of stunned silence, Taruru spoke up. "…Tororo? What do we do now?" He asked, panic evident in his voice since he had not been informed of what Tororo was going to be doing after he unwrapped the head. Now he was left hanging here and staring at a brain. He had expected Tororo to get what he needed to do done and be over with this. He had expected to not really actually have enough time to even really get a good look at it. Now he was getting way more than he bargained for and he couldn't handle it. "…Tororo?!"

"Shut up." Tororo muttered hurriedly as he finally snapped out of his disturbed stupor. He was visibly shaking at this point and he seemed much paler than he normally did. "Just shut up and hold him still." He instructed, taking a step closer and mentally bracing himself, while trying to remember every step he would need to do in order to attach this correctly. He waited patiently for Taruru to do as he told him. He couldn't help but chuckle dryly when Taruru begrudgingly held on to the patient's head, gripping it tight so that he could make sure it would not slip away from home while Tororo did whatever it was he was planning. It was harder to do than he imagined, because when Tororo finally grew a pair and pressed the shell against the head, it wiggled a bit with Tororo's constant shifting it around until he got it in the position it was supposed to be in. It took him a minute before he Tororo was finally satisfied that it was how it was supposed to be. Then he pulled it back and picked up a tool, but Taruru did not know what it was going to be used for.

"Keep holding him still Taruru….I have to get him connected to everything, OK?" He said. His voice was flat and it almost scared Taruru a bit. Tororo seemed to have almost…. Put himself on autopilot. He couldn't handle this under any normal circumstances, so he was just doing what he knew he had to. Taruru nodded shakily and readjusted his hands to keep them away from the shell. He had seen Tororo do this before, and he was envious of his skill at desensitizing himself to things on will, but Taruru figured it came with years and years of being an asshole. He could just stop caring.

Taruru closed his eyes while Tororo began his work, hooking things up to where they needed to be and double checking absolutely everything to make sure he had done it just right. It slowed the process down to a crawl, but it would be worth it in the end. Honestly it even sounded disgusting, and he had to pull his hand back on the head a bit every now and again when he felt the a lick of heat brush against his finger. It always startled him but he knew that Tororo was securing everything in the shell. Oh god this was terrifying.

It actually took about ten minutes before a doctor finally came in after detecting some fluctuation in activity in the body. He nearly yelled when he saw Taruru standing there over the body, but Tororo calmed him down and explained that he was with him. The doctor seemed hesitant to accept this, but he said nothing and simply took Taruru's place in holding the head steady while Tororo worked. Taruru muttered something about slow ass reacting doctors before going to slump in a chair and finally reacting. He had seen more than enough of a body in one night for a long time. Maybe enough to last his whole life. He sat there rather dazed for a while, just listening to Tororo curse quietly under his breath every now and again when he would get his own fingers to close to his soldering gun. Honestly THAT was something you wanted to hear the person working on a brain say.

Every now and again the doctor would mutter something to Tororo, things that Taruru would not have been able to understand even if he could hear him clearly. Tororo seemed to have no trouble understanding what the hell he was talking about, but that was probably because he had training in the medical field, as all mechanics on Keron were required to have.

Taruru figured that Tororo probably couldn't smell it, or that he didn't care at this point but it smelled AWFUL in here now. It was a mix of decaying body, blood and smoldering metal that made a wonderful sent that filled the room. He tried to breathe through his nose as little as possible, but it was hard for him and every now and then he got a nose full. It made his head spin and his gag reflexes act up to the point that several times he had made a mad dash to the door, only to calm down before he even left the room. This went on for hours while Tororo worked, never once feeling the need to rush for the door and empty his stomach of all the crap that he always ate. Taruru looked up to him at this point.

Finally, hours later Tororo set his tools down and let out a huge sigh. The operation had gone well, no to many hang ups occurring. The doctor backed away as well as they both looked over Tororo's work. It wasn't the prettiest job ever, but Tororo honestly wanted to see someone who could get the job done well AND made it look nice at this point.

'Kururu probably could have done it…' He thought to himself for a brief moment. He shook his head and looked down at himself. He was covered in a disgusting mixture of grease, oil and blood. Oh GOD…..

The doctor that had been with him said a few congratulatory words to him, but Tororo did not hear any of it. He simply stood up and headed towards the door. Taruru, who had sat up from his place on the floor that he had migrated to, watched him before hopping up and following him out the door.

"Man Tororo how the hell did you do that?! I mean I know you know about brains and technology and stuff, but I don't think anyone else would have been able to do a job like that!" Taruru asked excitedly. He was really just happy to be out of room and getting a bit of fresh air. He seemed a bit worried when Tororo did not respond, but he just continued to follow him down the hall. He almost thought that Tororo was trying to get away from him when he started walking faster and then eventually running down the hall, but he figured out what was wrong when he saw the tadpole run straight for a bathroom.

"Oh…"

He stood there for a moment before heading in to the bathroom and looking for the stall that Tororo was in. He found him in the closest stall to the door, hunched over the (very sanitized) toilet that was in the stall, vomiting out all of the contents of his stomach. The aqua tadpole frog stood there for a bit, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head while he watched Tororo go through this. Finally after a bit of dry heaving, Tororo sat back, shaking a bit and coughing.

Taruru decided to try and be useful so he got a few paper towels for Tororo, handing them to him once he was sure that Tororo was completely done with his throwing up. Tororo stared at them for a moment before reaching up and taking them. He wiped his mouth and stood up.

"Fucking hell…" He said after a moment of catching his breath. He did feel a lot better now, but god dam he HATED throwing up with a passion.

"Hehehe, What you can't take a bit of brain surgery Tororo?" Taruru asked, teasing him a bit.

Tororo rolled his eyes and reached out to sock Taruru in the arm. It was in good nature and it did make him feel a bit better. Still his anxiety for this case was not gone. He still had to make sure that everything would take to the changes that he had made, and then he had to crate the rest of the body so that his patient could hopefully lead some sort of normal life. The first step was done though, a now all they could do was wait to see if everything was functioning how it was supposed to.

"Come on Shorty." Taruru offered and draped an arm over Tororo's shoulder. He pulled him out of the room and towards the mess hall. Tororo was a bit worse for wear and he looked like he needed some snacks. He smiled a bit when Tororo chuckled a bit and smacked at him. He knew that Tororo would be alright if he was doing that.

"Shut the fuck up Fishface." Tororo grinned a bit.

He would be alright, he just needed a break.

**Hahahahahah**

**I don't know how brains work.**


	5. Chapter 5

Tororo had cursed loudly when he booted up his computer once again. He had been stupid and left it on while he had been working on the patient's head, and he had completely forgotten to plug it in so about half way through the process it had run out of power and died. Now that he had it plugged in he could use it again while he stuffed his face with food that Taruru had been so kind as to by him. As soon as it loaded his desktop, a barrage of IM alerts pinged loudly and tried to get Tororo's attention. He grumbled around the bit of food that he had in his mouth and glared at them while his computer running its natural boot up course. They were ALL from Kururu.

"Taruru what the fuck? You had to have heard my computer making weird noises, why the hell did you not log me off of my chat system, or shut my computer down?" He asked as he double checked a few things on his computer, making sure that he had saved all of the files holding the code to the patient's new half of a head. With as tired as he was he would not have been shocked to find that he had completely forgotten to save it and it would be all gone. Luckily for him he had saved it in one of his many 'double checks' and it was stored safely on his hard-drive.

"You told me not to mess with your computer. You threatened me with a painful death if I did!" Taruru grumbled.

"Yeah, I meant if I was in the kitchen or away for a few seconds. If I am in the middle of BRAIN SURGERY it's a bit of a different situation you know?" Tororo hissed and finally pulled up his chat system. He saw that Kururu was idle at the moment, so he sent him a message for when he got back telling him to calm the hell down and that he was one now.

"I don't see any difference…" Taruru said calmly and slurped loudly at his soda. He knew it pissed Tororo off but it was fair trade for having to deal with Tororo's constant crunching and lip smacking.

"Like hell you don't…" He shot him a glare through his glasses before a ping on his computer alerted him to the fact that Kururu was back and ready to spam him with questions again. He waved Taruru off and Taruru just rolled his eyes since he knew that Tororo would be talking to Kururu, even if he did not approve of it…

* * *

"Oi squirt, what has you so busy that you can't even spare me a few words?" Kururu had typed up. Tororo just rolled his eyes and began typing at an insane speed. He knew that this was going to end with a few sour words being exchanged.

"Brain surgery, if you must know, and why would I even want to talk with you in my down time? You're not the most relaxing person to talk to you know." Tororo replied huffily. He could practically hear Kururu laughing on the other end.

"Really? Brain surgery? So you finally decided to get yourself fixed up? I am proud of you Tororo." Kururu mocked.

"Shut up, I will have you know that I was the one performing the procedure. It was fucking disgusting but I got it done." Tororo boasted a bit. He deserved to feel proud of himself for his accomplishment. Kururu wasn't having any of his pride though.

"Oh, Well I'm sure whatever unfortunate soul you had the privilege of screwing up will be so happy to hear that he had an amateur poking around inside their head." He openly mocked. Kururu seemed to always get some sort of thrill out of pissing Tororo off as badly as he could. It was even better since he was on earth at the moment, so Tororo could only throw a fit instead of all out retaliating against him.

"Fuck you Kururu!" Tororo growled to himself, shooting a glare at Taruru when he heard him snickering and humming out a quiet 'told you so~' under his breath. "I did a dam good job, and the patient is going to be just fine."

"After they wake up right? How are you going to know anything until then? Whatever fucked up machine you hooked up to your victim might just be causing him intense pain! You would never know even up to his death. Wouldn't that just be sad? Hope you looked over your coding real good…" Kururu responded. Tororo could practically hear the malice in his words, even when he was only reading text typed by the yellow devil.

"I checked it over like five times Kururu. There aren't any errors in it…If he dies then at least I know it won't be my fault." Tororo stated, very sure of himself. Still he could not help but think of the possibilities. What if the patient WAS in immense pain right now? What if he had hooked something up wrong and it was slowly killing him?

No no, he couldn't think like that right now. The patient would be just fine. They would just have to wait until they could create a body for him, and then wait for him to wake up.

" I sure hope so squirt…would be a real shame if something bad were to happen to him. Kuu, Ku ku kuu~!"

"…Wow, I know that you like get off on people suffering and what not, but WHY did that sound like you were threatening to harm the patient? I know you can't from WAAAY over wherever the fuck you are, but still." Tororo sighed and leaned back in his chair and looked up from the screen a moment. Taruru seemed to have busied himself with talking to…Pururu. Fuck, ok what did she want?

"Hey I have to go now, see you later old man. A nurse wants me now Puu pu pu pu!"

* * *

Tororo added a heart to the message (like he always did) and sent it and actually closed his computer before Kururu could even respond to it. He did not need Kururu bothering him while he was trying to talk to the nurse who was basically in charge of the work that he did here. He figured that Pururu had probably already looked over the patient and evaluated his work. Maybe she could give him a bit of insight as to how the patient was actually doing. Once he had put his laptop away, Pururu gave him a big smile and took a seat at in between both him and Taruru.

"My…That's quite a lot of food Tororo. What did I tell you last time about watching your diet?" She said coyly while she pulled out a few papers from a folder that she had been clutching to her chest. Tororo rolled his eyes and took another big bite of the not so healthy food that he had in front of him just to spite her. She said nothing and simply put the papers that she had pulled out in front of him.

"Now, I looked over the patient when I when I had a bit of free time, and I am SO glad that we were able to get you in here when we did. Now that you have the head fixed up though, and I assume that you have what you have done is done, you do realize that there will be a bit more of a rush to get the rest of his body functioning again, right?" she asked, watching as Tororo looked over the statistics that the papers read. He seemed to understand them easily enough so she did not bother with explaining them to him.

"Yeah…I know…" He muttered while groaning internally. He was not going to be getting any sleep will he? Maybe he could squeeze a few hours of sleep in a bit later, but that seemed like the best he would be able to get, if he was lucky.

"OH! Tororo, we also have more personal information on the patient. His name is Zoruru and he is…or WAS an assassin in training under Assassin Jirara. It seemed he got in to a bit of an accident out in the middle of the woods while he was sparing with a partner." Pururu said, looking over one of the papers that she still had on her clipboard.

"Really? How did you find this out without the patient actually waking up and talking to you?" Tororo asked.

"We found the partner he had been sparring with. Or more like he found us. Trainee Dororo came to us about an hour ago in hysterics. When he started asking about a friend who had been crushed, we knew he was talking about Zoruru, so we took him in for questioning. There had been an accident that caused the tree to fall on Zoruru, crushing half of his body. Not knowing what else to do, Dororo had panicked and run off to look for help. When he came back someone had already found him and called for an ambulance so Zoruru was nowhere to be found." She explained, sighing a bit. "Dororo is not in a very good state of mind though…He seems so traumatized by the state that his friend is in. He has been reduced to little more than a blubbering tadpole for now. He's gonna need serious help after this."

Tororo was a bit sad to hear that. It seemed that Dororo had not actually done anything wrong. He knew that witnessing such a sight could be mad for someone's mental health. He hoped he would pull through it. Maybe Tororo could go have a chat with him after he was done eating.

"What are you going to do with him if he is in such a bad state?" Tororo asked, scooting the papers back over to Pururu who scooped them up and put them back on her clipboard.

"Well I think we will at least try to keep him here for a few days, even if we can't force him, and try and get him to calm down and maybe see if we can't get him some help. He did say that he wants to see Zoruru at least once before he leaves, but a lot of that will have to do with what you think would be safe for the patient, and how far along you are in building a body for him. Remember Tororo, Safety and health first. "

Tororo sighed and rubbed his forehead. He was happy to at least finally know the patient's name, but it hardly did him any good at this point. God he was tired…this was too much for him to handle. He knew that Dororo was not his responsibility, but just knowing that there was one more person depending on him to save Zoruru's life was enough to make the dread that had been settling in his stomach since he had gotten there swell about three sizes. He groaned quietly and rubbed his hands across his face, nearly jumping when he felt a hand touch his arm.

"Tororo?" Pururu asked quietly. "Are you OK? I heard about your little…rush to the restroom after you attached the helm to Zoruru…..You don't look well." She said, showing concern for him and his health over that of even the patient.

"It's nothing Pururu…I'm just a bit tired and…Well I'm under a lot of pressure here you know?" Tororo actually took his glasses off and set them on the table so he could rub at his tired eyes properly. Normally he would have been a bit self-conscious without his glasses on, but both Pururu and Taruru had seen him without them on, so he had little reason to feel like that.

"Well…I SUPPOSE that we could find someone else to get the job done if we need to. Maybe one of your co-workers…." She started, choosing her words carefully. "It will be rather hard to do so though…" She mumbled quietly.

Tororo groaned and shook his head, waving her off. He could swear that he could FEEL the guilt-trips she was throwing his way. He did not know how she did it. maybe it was just because she was female? Females could do fucked up shit and screw with brains so easily. He knew he wouldn't be able to let Pururu down, especially not after he had worked so hard on the helm to begin with. He was one step closer to getting the patient stabilized and he would be dammed if he wasn't going to try his hardest to get the rest of the job done. Honestly he had worked under similar conditions before, but he had never had this intense pressure to do the best job that he could. This was a matter of life and death, and he was still rather new to this whole concept.

"It's fine Pururu…..I just need some coffee and maybe some energy drinks. If I could take a bit of a break, I would like to speak with …what as his name? Dororo? Yes I would like to speak with him for a bit and maybe find out a bit more about the patient's physic, anything else that went wrong during the accident…I might give him a bit of encouragement as well." Tororo said, drinking the last of his soda that Taruru had bought for him.

"Really? You actually want to talk with him?...You MIGHT be able to…He has not been responding to many of our questions, but every now and again he has something of use to say." She said, smiling a bit, happy with Tororo's decision to stay and work on the patient. She stood up and picked up some of the trash to help Tororo throw away his mess now that he was done. "I can take you to his room if you will follow me." She offered.

"Oh yes, Just forget about the fact that I am here and in need of serious entertainment." Taruru said, leaning his chair back on just two legs. Tororo just rolled his eyes and pressed a finger to Taruru's forehead, tipping him back just a little bit. Taruru panicked last moment and steadied himself. Now his chair was back on all fours and he had no danger of falling. Once his heart stopped racing and his brain had processed that he was no longer in danger of splitting his head open on hard linoleum he glared daggers at Tororo, who just laughed a bit and shrugged.

"Was that exciting enough for you Taruru? Are you entertained?" Tororo asked, a bit of spiteful sarcasm in his voice. "If you're in such need of entertainment then you should just go home. This is a hospital, not a fun-house."

"…But…If I leave, then who is going to make sure you take care of yourself while you're here? I mean really, you're hopeless! I also know you would be so heartbroken if I left you alone here. " Taruru snickered a bit.

"Oh yes, I can see myself wailing hopelessly over the loss of my dear friend Taruru. 'where has he gone?! Shall he ever return to me one day?! I can only hope…'…yeah no fuck you. " Tororo rolled his eyes for about the billionth time in the last day or so. Pururu rested a hand on his shoulder and Tororo turned to leave with her. Taruru called out to him as he was leaving though.

"Do not fear my love! I will send you candy grams, since I know the only way for you to soothe your pain is to feed your fat ass!" He yelled, not at all embarrassed by saying such things in the middle of a hospital cafeteria. He always had to have the last laugh.

When Tororo flipped him the bird over his shoulder while he was following Pururu out of the room, he could hear Taruru laughing from the table.

* * *

"Dororo?" Pururu asked quietly as she poked her head in to the room. Tororo could not hear any response from the slightly mental patient in the room, so he did not say anything.

"Dororo I have the…the uh…The mechanic who is working with Zoruru at the moment with me. Would you like to speak to him?" She asked politely. Tororo once again did not hear a response from anyone in the room, but Pururu pulled back and smiled a bit, ushering Tororo in to the room.

The room was a standard room, not one of the critical condition rooms that Zoruru was placed in at the moment. It had white walls with pale blue curtains, which he supposed was supposed to give the patients some sort of sense of hope that they would get better form whatever illness they may have had. There was an assortment of medical equipment, which Tororo had some idea of what most of the items did for different patients. On the medical bed sat a blue frog, holding his knees to his chest and sat with a vacant stare on his face. Every little bit he would sniffle a bit and move to wipe his eyes on his arm or one of his knees.

Tororo glanced at Pururu, who nodded and nudged him forward a bit. Toror sighed and cleared his throat, taking a few steps towards the bed Dororo was on. He could see Dororo's eyes glance at him but other than that Dororo said nothing to him. Tororo sighed after a moment and rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

"...Uh...Hey there Dororo..."He muttered. Wow what a great way to start this. "I heard that your the patient's friend?" Tororo asked, trying to get Dororo to say anything.

Dororo remained quiet, sniffling a bit and whimpering quietly at Tororo's words. He nodded after a moment and Tororo sighed in relief that he wasn't going to have to sit there and talk to someone who wouldn't respond.

"Can you tell me a bit about what happened?" He asked.

Dororo watched Tororo carefully this time, his eyes shiny and wet with tears as he contemplated what he could possibly say to him. He sat up and wiped his eyes one more time, taking a shaky breath and trying to compose himself.

"...I...I tried to get him help." He started." But when I came back he was GONE!" He said as if he was trying to justify himself or prove that he had done nothing wrong. This was likely to make himself feel better about the accident since nobody else was blaming him for anything.

"I-I can still hear him crying in my head and I can SEE it!" He bemoaned. "He cried out to me for help but there was nothing I could do...and he begged me to stay with his...He was so scared..."

"Yeah well at least you don't have to look at his organs and shit..." Tororo muttered sarcastically under his breath. Dororo shot him a glare and made a few more pitiful noises. Tororo was well aware that he sucked at this sort of comforting thing, but he had to say SOMETHING to him in order to make this better for Dororo." Yeah yeah, Sorry about that...and its better that you couldn't move the tree or anything, because me would have died if you had. Your obviously not trained in the medical field...Look I have been working on him for a while now, and honestly I'm shocked he is still alive. We have his head all fixed up for now and we have to get his body patched up but...If we do that he should be alright. As long as there are no complications anyway." He explained.

Dororo stared at the bed for a moment, thinking about this news for a moment. "He will live? ..even after such an injury...and I know he will never forgive me...It took me so long to get back to him, I told him I would only be gone a moment..."

"I'm sure if you explain it to him when he wakes up, he will understand. Its not like you made a tree fall on him on purpose." Tororo said.

Dororo sniffled a bit more, but he seemed just a little calmer than he had been when Tororo first entered the room. He nodded a bit and sighed. Zoruru couldn't possibly blame him for something like that...could he? No, He couldn't dwell on that right now. He had to let Zoruru get better first, and then he could go speak with him...And he WOULD get better. He always got better somehow. This young tadpole here was going to help Zoruru get better. Bless him.

Tororo yelped a bit when he felt a pair of arms wrap around his waist and hug him tight. Dororo had buried his face in to Tororo's belly and Tororo could feel tears leaking out and it was kinda gross, and kinda nice at the same time. It would have been better if Tororo did not have a serious problem with people touching him, but he figured he could let this one slide.

"Thank you..." Dororo mumbled in to Tororo's belly. He hugged him a bit tighter and Tororo sighed before wrapping his own arms around Dororo's head. He understood Dororo's need for comfort and reassurance right now, for he had the same feeling of hopelessness that Dororo did. Everything he had said to Dororo was true, but when he had been speaking he made himself sound much more confident about the fact that Zoruru would actually be OK than he really felt. He could do that though, give Dororo a bit of hope now that he truly needed it.

**Things should start getting exciting here in the next chapter or so. Please don't fall asleep on me.**


	6. Chapter 6

Nobody had ever expected Zoruru to wake up so soon after his head had been fixed. In fact, the very thought of that ever happening terrified them, so they kept him drugged up. Every few hours a nurse would come in and inject a bit more to keep him under. It did not take much due to the small amount of area that the medicine would get in to.

Tororo had actually been in the room when the unlikely happened. At first he had not understood what was happening, and he had not even noticed that anything strange was happening. He heard a few quiet noises from the patient's area, but he passed it off as his imagination since he had been sitting in silence for so long. Perhaps he was hearing things sine he had been up so long. That happened a lot with him when he went through his insomnia binges. He would get extra paranoid and constantly think that he was being watched or that he was hearing strange noises. He merely glanced at Zoruru and saw that he was still in his bed and nobody had come in to mess with him.

Taruru had gone home a few hours earlier. Now he was left alone and he had only a body for company. He drilled away at the much larger frame that he was making for the patient's torso. If he could get this created and running properly then he would have a much higher chance at actually keeping Zoruru alive. He was looking forward to that because he would finally be able to rest and maybe get some sleep in his system instead of running on a sheer will to stay awake. He had actually be able to work better with Taruru's constant chatter acting as sort of an alarm clock for him when he started to feel his eyes droop.

He looked over the quick diagrams that he had drawn out, glaring at the numbers that were messily scribbled out next to it. These measurements couldn't be right…Perhaps he had miscalculated or something. Normally he would have been quick to deny any error on his part, but under the circumstances he would not have been shocked if he HAD measured wrong. He groaned and grabbed his tape measure again, forcing himself to stand on his numb legs and waddle over to Zoruru. He hated doing this because it meant that he had to get closer to the horrid smell that the body continued to get off, but he seemed to becoming indifferent to it now that he had spent many hours in the room with the body. In fact, he hardly seemed to care as he stretched the tape measure along the length of the patient's body. He made sure to grab the exact spot on the tape measure that would give him the correct length this time. He had little room for mistake.

Once he was sure that he had the correct measurements, he wrote them down on a small piece of paper that he had on hand at the moment. He HAD been off, but just by a little bit. He huffed to himself before sighing and running a hand over his forehead. He needed more coffee. Maybe he could get one of the nurses to bring him some next time they came in to check on the status of the patient. They did so pretty frequently so it shouldn't have been a problem.

Tororo glanced over Zoruru, looking up at the head that he had created for him. The skin right around where the metal had been fused with the organic head looked sore, and a bit irritated. He figured it would probably be like that for a day or two before the swelling finally went down. Most skin normally did not take well to having solid objects fused to it, so this was to be expected.

Tororo took a moment then to just…just really look over his patient. He had not really gotten much of a chance to really just observe the frog that he was working on. Of course he had spent a lot of the last day and a half looking at him…but he was looking over the details now. His grey skin, his scarred body and his severed symbol. He figured that the other half of the symbol had been the same, but there was no way for him to be sure. It almost made him want to somehow add the other half of the frogs symbol to the half of a body that he was working on creating, but he was not sure that would be possible. Not at this point anyway. It was just a minor, unimportant detail right now.

When Tororo had finished the half of a head that he had created for Zoruru, Pururu had insisted on putting the cap and cloth that Zoruru had been found with at the scene of his accident back on him as a sort of sign of respect. It of course had been sanitized heavily, but it was still heavily stained with blood, and Tororo just though that it was a bit disgusting. If anything Zoruru would probably just want to get a new hat all together when he got better.

IF he got better.

Tororo sighed and reached up to run his fingers along the bolts that held the shell and all of its contents together. Perhaps if this did work he would go back and change bits of this to make it just a bit more aesthetically pleasing. The metal was rough and scratchy, and honestly it was not the most perfect shape. It was haphazardly done but it would work for what it needed to do right now. It was a shell, nothing more, nothing less.

He figured that this would be as good a time as any to make sure that there was no extreme swelling or any other anomalies in the head. He gently reached over and cupped Zoruru's head. He had to be extra careful with this so that he would not do further damage to him.

He slowly turned Zoruru's head from right to left, looking over it as he did so and checking different areas that he knew would be far more susceptible to injury or infection. A visual inspection was not the most thorough, but it was the most he was willing to do right then. At least he was using his short 'break' to do something productive.

He slowly felt around Zoruru's head, checking to make sure that the metal he had used would actually be light enough. He felt around his neck and lifted his head just a little. All seemed good so far. The metal would be light enough for the patient to lift comfortably, as if it was just a normal piece of them. He would -...

Tororo was sorely tempted to just yank his head away when something that felt like blood got on his hand. It rubbed off on to his hand while he had it placed on his cheek.

He set Zoruru's head back down on the pillow easily before pulling his hand up to look at it. No blood. It was just wet. Tororo frowned and looked back over the organic side of the patient's face. There was no real reason why anything wet should have been on his face. Perhaps it was some kind of puss...? No, that made no sense. There wasn't anything on his face to leak puss.

Tororo looked over the patient's cheek. He saw a clear watery shine on his face, no doubt the liquid that had gotten on his hand. Still there was no definite source.

Tororo huffed a bit in frustration when he could not figure out why the patient's face would have been wet. He turned to the tray that had an assortment of small tools for him to use and grabbed a flashlight. It was probably nothing but...He couldn't let this go. He would be wondering for hours and would not be able to focus if he did not find the source. Maybe there was a leak in the hospital and water had dripped on him? Who knew?

He shined the flashlight on Zoruru, wincing as this only made the new half of his head look that much worse. It showed all the scratches and dents, and it amplified them so that there was no possible way that you could ignore it. He would definitely have to do something about that at a later time. He could not live knowing that he had crated something so...ugly, uncool. He sighed and shook his head. That would have to wait for another day though.

Tororo turned his attention to the fleshy side of Zoruru's face. It was pretty scratched up from having branches and twigs landing on his face and tearing at it. Those would heal in time though. He turned his attention to the glimmer of light that reflected off the ex-assassin's cheek. It was actually dry for the most part now, so he followed the damp trail from the bottom of his cheek up to the corner of his eye.

Oh...

Tororo stared at Zoruru for a moment before reaching up with a shaking hand and pulling at the Grey frog's eyelid. He lifted it up so that he could see reddish brown eyes. More fresh tears leaked out when he did this, and they simply ran down his cheek. The eyes were a very pretty color, but they sent a jolt of fear down Tororo's spine. Especially when the eye darted over to stare right back at him. Seeing the eye darting around in the tell tale signs of a REM cycle would have been frightening enough for Tororo. This however was NOT a REM cycle. This patient was awake.

Tororo took a few shocked steps back, letting the eye close again and squeeze out a few more tears. He stared at his patient for a few more moments, almost considering the fact that he may have imagined the whole thing.

No... Zoruru was awake. Conscious. Feeling. How was this even possible?!

Tororo took a few more steps back, looking around in a sort of panic. Finally he looked towards the door and ran over. "NURSE! NURSE! PURURU! SOMEBODY!" He yelled out in to the hall, desperate to get anyone's attention at this point. Oh god. What had he done?

What had he DONE?!


	7. Chapter 7

Tororo kept glancing over at the body every time the doctor working on Zoruru made a noise of any kind. He wanted to just sit there and watch the doctor and see everything that he did. Maybe it would help him figure out if he had actually caused Zoruru to wake up somehow or if it was just some fluke accident. Sadly he could not. Pururu sat before him and continued to ask him a series of questions, to which most of them Tororo only responded with grunts or scrambled words.

"Did anything else strange happen Tororo?" she asked, reaching up and turning Tororo's head so that he was looking at her instead of Zoruru. She could practically see how badly the incident had shaken him.

"No he just...He just stared at me Pururu." He said, shaking his head in disbelief. "He stared at me...like he was accusing me of doing this to him."

Pururu sighed and wrote a few things down on her clipboard before setting it aside and holding Tororo's hands in her own, trying to comfort him.

"Tororo, calm down. Your over reacting now." She said quietly. "More than likely it was not him actually looking at you but some sort of reflex in the body. You cant let your emotions get the better of you right now." She murmured. Tororo did not seem to respond to her naturally comforting nature though.

"You didn't see what I did Pururu." Tororo muttered, glancing over at the body once again. "He was hurt. He was scared and sad and in so much pain. I could see all that shit just through him glaring at me and it was awful Pururu...He was crying for fucks sake." He said, pulling his hands away from Pururu and rubbing them across his face.

Pururu was worried about Tororo. He was tired and stressed enough as it was. He did not need any more stress by thinking that the patient he was working on was in a great amount of pain. No doctor wanted their patient to suffer, and even though Tororo was not a doctor, he was experiencing the same thing as she often did when a patient of hers could not be helped. Honestly she could not afford to loose him now though. He needed him to finish this job, or to at least get him in a much more stable position.

Taking a look over at the doctor she had working on the patient, she saw that he was refilling his IV bag with some more sedatives. This would put him back under and keep him from feeling any more pain. They just had to have him on regular doses.

The doctor came over to the both of them and Tororo looked up at him, wanting him to say something good.

"I saw no signs of conscious activity from him. Still I went ahead and gave him a sedative to keep him under just in case. I don't know what you saw Tororo. If he was actually awake, then he must have passed out from the pain he was in before we got here. I know that you have been awake for several days now, so it could have been your mind playing tricks on you as well." He explained, trying to be as logical as he could. Tororo just shook his head.

"I KNOW what I saw. He was awake." Tororo snapped. It was true, he was dead tired but he was not one to start hallucinating things like that even after such a long time without sleep.

"Well...I mean if he Was awake, wouldn't that just mean that you will want to get the frame to his body done faster? So that he wont get the chance to be in pain like that again?" Pururu asked, pushing the subject of work gently. Tororo did not take it so lightly though and scoffed, standing up and heading over to the half done frame that he had laid out on his makeshift workbench.

"Pururu I am working my fucking tail off. I can't go any faster than this, especially with how little sleep I have gotten OK? You can try and guilt trip me all you want, but that's not gonna get this done any faster. You know what will? You getting your nurses to stop being stuck up bitches and have them get me some coffee or soda or tools so I don't have to. They seem to think that just cause I am not a patient here they don't have to do things, but honestly it would save me a lot of time and energy. I have this stupid thing about half done and then I can attach it to him. After that I plan on sleeping for a LONG time OK?" He said, rambling a bit as he started to pick up tools and attach thing to the inside of the shell. HE did lift it up a bit to show Pururu that he was in fact making quite a bit of progress on it. "Don't ask me to work any faster or harder than I am, because I just CAN'T OK?"

Pururu stared at the exhausted tadpole for a moment before nodding and standing. "I will look in to that." She said quietly. She did care for Tororo, and she knew that she was pushing him hard but she did not know what else to do in this situation. She would be eternally grateful for his willingness to stick with this for so long. She turned and nodded to the doctor in the room to follow her and headed out of the room.

As soon as Pururu had left the room Tororo leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He was so tired. His entire body ached and practically screamed at him to just take a break, to just shut his eyes for a few minutes and rest. He knew that he couldn't do that though. He wanted so badly to just hand the job off over to somebody else for a while, but he just COULDN'T. He didn't trust anybody else enough to simply pick up from where he was. If he made any mistake at this point, it could mean the life of the frog laying just a few feet away from him.

Just a while ago, when he had seen that frog staring at him like he was the scum of the earth, that was when his life truly became important to him. Before then he had been alive yes, but Tororo had never seen him act alive in any form. He was a husk that he was trying to fix. Another project for Tororo to work on. A high stakes project, but a project none the less. When he looked in to that eye he saw something else. He saw emotion; pain and fear. This frog was alive and fighting. It truly dawned on Tororo at that moment that he had someone's LIFE in his hands. If he lost that life, he could never get it back, and that's what scared him most.

Tororo groaned and took his glasses off, tossing them on the desk in front of him. He was not sure what it was, the pain from the pure exhaustion that rang through out his body or the terror that he had constantly eating at his mind, but he was at his wits end right here. He shook his head a bit, biting back a small sob that threatened to break through and make itself audible. Not that anyone was here to hear it, but dammit his pride was at stake. He already hated himself for feeling so weak at a time like this, but even that did not stop him from feeling a few stray tears from leaking out from the corners of his eyes. He was tired.

Tororo stayed like that for a few minutes, just resting for a few moments but not letting himself sleep. He still had so much work to do...he doubted that he could even get to sleep if he tried, despite how tired he was. There was to much on his mind right then. When he finally pulled his head back up so he could look at his desk, he just looked over everything that he had on it for a moment. Just looking at everything made him feel like breaking down again, but his ego couldn't handle something like that again, so he just sat up and took a deep breath, reaching for the screw driver and his glasses before pulling himself closer to his work.

He could do this.

He WOULD do this. He didn't have a choice in the matter.

**Hah. I am on a roll. Of short chapters. Chapters none the less.**


	8. Chapter 8

**I have mentioned before that I would be writing a book or story that involved my own Original story-lines and characters and everything, and I have begun to do so. It will be posted up chapter by chapter just like a fanfiction on , or Deviantart, and I already have the first part up. I am under the name Tantilla, and the story is called Just Another Day. If you like my stories here, please go check it out, give me some feed back, inspiration to write it and help me spread it around. Thanks.**

Tororo found that building Zoruru's body was far more difficult than building the head for one reason; He had to actually MOVE the body far more so that he could get accurate measurements. If he was going to do this, he wanted to only have to do it once and be done with it. He was only trying to be as thorough as possible, all while trying to be speedy about it so that he did not end up killing the patient by running out of time.

Sadly, that meant spending an almost absurd time near the body and making sure that the frame was matching up to the shape of Zoruru's body. That was the hard part. Other than that he spent his time checking up on the progress of the files he had been installing in to the hardware that would make up the innards of Zoruru's new half of a body. It was slow going, but it was going. He may have wanted to see about rushing the instals, but he did not want to risk messing something up or damaging the files in some way that would harm Zoruru more than help him. He finally had this to a point that he believed that it would work. If he was careful, everything should go as planned and Zoruru would begin his recovery.

Unfortunately, this led Tororo to being rather nit-picky about his work. If something was off, he would put it back in to its proper place. More than once he had deleted whole chunks of code simply because he did not think it was the best coding that he could use in that situation, and that a different usage would be better for Zoruru. This took quite a bit of time to get through everything and make sure that everything was running just fine, but it would be worth it. Once he finally attached the body to Zoruru, everything would fall together and he would have a half living, half robotic frog that functioned exactly how it was supposed to. This undoubtedly would be my greatest creation yet, and I couldn't help but feel a bit proud over it.

I had calmed down just a bit, but not a lot. I just looked calmer to anyone who did not know me well. Kururu, Maybe Taruru would have been able to tell had they been there, but they weren't so I did not have to work extra hard at concealing my emotions today.

One of the main reasons he seemed so calm was that he simply did not have the energy to be stressed. He had entered a strange zen like trance a few hours earlier, and honestly it seemed to make things far easier than it had been before. He could think clearer and work at a more steady pace as long as he kept caffeine in him. At one point he had asked a nurse to bring him an IV drip filled with coffee and soda, and she laughed, thinking it was a joke. When she found out that Tororo had indeed been quite serious about it, she refused, instead just bringing Tororo some coffee to keep him awake. Now Tororo was running on a bloodstream of coffee, soda and the sheer will to stay awake and get this done. When the new frame was attached to the patient, he could take a well earned rest without any worry.

It had been almost a day since the incident with Zoruru waking up despite his rather unfinished state and heavy drugs. He had remained asleep without further incident, but that did not keep Tororo from thinking about the look that he had seen in Zoruru's eyes. It was clearly a cry for help, but there was nothing that Tororo could have done for him at that point. He felt bad about it, but he was being the most helpful that he could here to begin with.

Tororo had tried to avoid Zoruru as much as possible, but that had become increasingly challenging due to the task at hand. In the end he sucked it up and did what he needed to in order to get the frame done. At the point that he had it, there would be no more measuring and trying to guess the right size for certain parts. Now all Tororo had to do was load it up and actually attach it to his paintent. He doubted that he would be the one to actually hook Zoruru up to his new side of his body, but he would have to be there to monitor and make sure everything was in place. He barely trusted himself with his hand tools in his sleep deprived state, much less a blowtorch when we would be digging around in somebody's stomach. He could just imagine so many ways that could go wrong.

More and more he found himself thinking of Kururu. Perhaps it was because both Taruru and Pururu had gone home for the night, but he was lonely and seriously craving a bit of attention from the Yellow Devil. At one point he had even started a one sided chat with him, in which Kururu rambled about his scouting mission on some weird planet called earth. He could tell that Kururu was excited by the way he went from one topic to another. One moment he was talking about what all he had discovered here like a young tadpole doing their first science experiment. The next he was talking about how annoying and disgusting his partner Tamama was. Tororo would have responded to him, but his hands were just a little full at the moment. He seemed to understand that for the most part, but that did not stop him from teasing Tororo about it and saying that he could multitask way better that him. This pissed Tororo off just a little, but it gave him a bit of the energy that he actually needed in order to focus on this properly. He could deal with Kururu's teasing if he would have a bit of company.

Despite Kururu's rather dickish nature, he was nice to have just mumbling in the background and chatting about things that actually did pertain to Tororo's interests. They may have had a rocky relationship, but Tororo always managed to remember just why he loved Kururu at times like this.

Ah, Finally, The frame was done. It was not the prettiest thing ever, just like the robotic half of Zoruru's head was not the prettiest thing ever, but it would work just fine for what he needed. He sighed in a rather relaxed nature and leaned back in his chair, looking over how long he had until the hardware would be ready to be put in to the frame. He also glanced at the sound-waves that were produced on his screen with every word that Kururu said. That along with the quiet hospital and rhythmic beeping of heart-monitors were greatly relaxing. It was not long before Tororo found himself starting to doze off. He muttered something to Kururu, probably a thank you and some sort of 'I love you', to which Kururu just scoffed and called him a fucking idiot for. Tororo did not care though. His eyes finally closed and he was able to sleep for the first time in days.


	9. Chapter 9

Tororo wasn't completely sure why he choose to stay by Zoruru's side when he had finally finished putting the new torso half on him. It wasn't like he had some sort of obligation to this man. Hell he didn't even really know him.

Despite this, he quickly became inseparable from the unconscious man. He had not left the room in days. He slept on a chair beside the bed, listening to the quiet beeping of machinery and the steady whirr that emitted from the robotic half of his patient. It was rather comforting to know that after this point there was little Tororo could do for him. It was out of his hands now. Somehow he figured this wouldn't help with the guilt he would undoubtedly feel if Zoruru were to die after all this.

He didn't mean to be, but he got incredibly cranky. Spending all of your time in one room would do that to anyone, and he wasn't exactly the friendliest person on Keron to begin with. It had started out as simply being a bit rude to some of the nurses, snapping at them when they would come in to check on him and Zoruru. Nothing truly out of the ordinary, as he had been doing that since he had gotten there.

Tororo had only really noticed that he was acting up a bit when he had started talking back to Pururu, even scolding her and trying to do her job for her when he thought that she may accidentally do something to the armor on Zoruru. In any normal situation Tororo would have had full confidence in Pururu's medical prowess. She was an excellent nurse and had helped him with his own injuries countless times. Of course Pururu took Tororo's actions as a direct insult to her talents and she had been rather quiet around him since then.

That of course wasn't the worst though.

Taruru came to visit him often, stating that he had nothing better to do than bug Tororo while he was working. Though Tororo often felt as though he was a bit lonely, he always said that he hated it when Taruru showed up, and everyday that Zoruru did not wake up again, Tororo found himself meaning what he said to Taruru.

"You know sitting here and staring at him for hours on end isn't going to wake him up Tororo. You should go home, eat some real food instead of the crap that you get from the cafeteria." Taruru pleaded with him, tugging on his hand and trying to get him up from the chair he was seated in.

"And do what? Leave this guy here for the nurses to poke around in? What if something goes wrong and I'm not here to fix it. He could wake up at any time, and I kinda wanna be here when that happens to make sure everything is actually working properly. Its keeping him alive yes, but what if he is nothing more than a vegetable at this point?"

"Then screw him! You hate vegetables Tororo. Some half dead man isn't worth throwing you're own health away and you know it. If Pururu were in here she would be agreeing with me." He huffed, kicking at the ground a bit.

"Do I ever listen to anything either of you two say?" Tororo asked, never taking his eyes off of Zoruru.

"No..."

"Then why would I now?"

Taruru went quiet, sticking his lower lip out in a pout that Tororo never resisted. It was his last resort, his killer move. He had to get closer to Tororo, pawing at him and tugging on his arm just a little more to get his attention. From the angle he was at, he could see Tororo glance t him, doing a double take as he stared at the expression on Taruru's face.

"...Don't do this to me now Taruru." Tororo muttered, sighing and rubbing his face,

"Don't do what?"

"THIS! This...This stupid fish-face of yours." Tororo snapped.

"Take a break Tororo. Just...come for a walk with me? Do something other than sit here and stare at this poor sap." Taruru pleaded, motioning towards the door that led out of the room.

Tororo bit his lip, watching a few nurses pass by the open door. His legs had long since gone numb from sitting in one spot for so long, and a walk sounded absolutely wonderful. He looked over at Taruru, who still had that stupid pout of his going and he groaned, pushing himself up. He could never say no to that stupid face of his, and it was always really satisfying to see him light up the way he did when he stood up.

"15 minutes OK? We can go get some sodas or something, then I'm coming back." Tororo said, grabbing his laptop bag that had been collecting dust beside him. Taruru's excitement quickly deflated, but he excepted Tororo's choice.

"God, you really don't want to miss anything. You're like some love sick puppy waiting for its master to wake from a damn coma." He said, following Tororo out of the room and shutting the door behind him, happy that he wouldn't have to look Zoruru anymore. It was a depressing sight really.

"I'm not lovesick and hes not in a coma. I'm just...Worried is all." Tororo said, looking around at all of the nurses and doctors on duty, knowing most of them by name now that he had spend so long here. Many of them had been bringing him food and coming in to check on Zoruru from time to time.

"You have been worried since you got here. You don't know this man, come home already. If he dies then he dies, you can feel bad about it if you want but there's not really anything you can do about it at this point right? And if he lives...well they can call you up, tell you hes awake and you can come see him AFTER you have gotten rested up. I know you have been sleeping here and everything, so your not falling flat on your face anymore, but its still not healthy..." Taruru said, staying a bit to close for Tororo's comfort, but he was used to that by now.

"Yeah well living with constant stress and fear that you may have inadvertently KILLED someone isn't any better." Tororo muttered,

"Well your already doing that to yourself, so you might as well suffer at home, taking care of yourself if nothing else." Taruru pointed out. Tororo just scoffed as they left the critical condition wing of the hospital, heading for the exit. "I'm worried to Tororo. You're my best friend and I don't wanna see you ACTUALLY mess something up with this guy because you aren't taking care of yourself. I know you. You would never let it go, never forgive yourself if something bad were to happen."

Tororo shot him a dull look, chuckling a bit after a moment. "I'm the best there is Taruru. If something goes wrong with all that mechanical shit attached to him and I'm not there, hes going to die."

"He will die if something goes wrong and you're too tired or half starved. You're one of the biggest fat-asses that I know and I didn't see one bit of trash around you. You're out of your freaking mind." Taruru accused.

"I've been trying to eat Taruru, trust me I have. Every time I think about it though, or try to keep anything down I feel like throwing up. I eat enough...I just don't want to feel like that right now. I have enough on my plate as it is." Tororo said, speeding up his walking just a bit as they got outside, heading down the street to where a few well known food stands were located.

"Do you know why you feel like that? Cause your stressing yourself out! That's your body telling you to stop being a fucking idiot and do what you need to!" Taruru chased after Tororo, jogging to keep up with him. He grabbed his arm and pulled him back, giving him a stern look. "Tororo, I know your worried, scared for this guy even. Your pushing yourself way to hard though..."

Tororo looked over Taruru, then turning to look at the stands that were located just down the street. He so wished he could have avoided this conversation, but honestly he had seen it coming for days now. Taruru was rarely serious about anything he did, but Tororo knew that Taruru cared for him. He was like a brother, a friend, sometimes something akin to a lover. Taruru was important to him, and he was important to Taruru, and he could clearly see that in his friends eyes right then. Taruru wanted to help him.

Tororo wanted the help, so he wasnt quite sure what prompted the next words out of his mouth.

"You don't understand."

In a flash, Tororo saw something change in Taruru. The worried, honest to god concerned look that Tororo seldom saw was quickly replaced by an emotion that he saw even less in Taruru. Anger. Not the pissy tantrums that Taruru was infamous for throwing. No this was rage. A disturbingly calm rage, but Tororo could tell that Taruru was fuming inside.

"I...Don't understand?" Taruru asked quiet, his voice breaking just a little towards the end of the question. His eyes were locked on Tororo, not even blinking as Tororo nervously licked his lips, nodding.

Taruru was on him in a flash, shoving him against the wall to the nearest building and pinning him down. If he had not had a helmet his head would have painfully bounced against the hard cement, probably doing more damage than Taruru meant to. Taruru was in his face, glaring daggers at him. Tororo squirmed for a moment seeing if he could pull his hands away from the wall but Taruru was much stronger than he normally let on.

"What the fuck do you mean I don't understand?" Taruru asked, hissing out the last word. " You think I don't know what its like to have someone's life in your hands?! Cause let me tell you this, I know what its like, I've been through it before. Probably in worse situations than yourself."

Tororo stared at Taruru, eyes wide in surprise. Taruru had never mentioned this before...

"So don't talk to me like that Tororo. Don't tell me I don't understand because I DO." Taruru said, quieting down, his hands shaking just a bit.

Tororo was quiet, his mind a bit foggy fro exactly what Taruru had been talking about. He hadnt been taking care of himself but...He had been so busy.

"That's different..." Tororo said quietly, looking down. I really have a chance to save this person...I don't want anything getting in the way of it." He said with bit of bite in his voice now, shooting a glare at Taruru. "I still have to build this guy's arm and leg! I still have so much work to do. Half of his brain was crushed...Do you know how much he is going to have to relearn, basic tasks and simple things...I have to be there for that. I don't need any distractions, anything getting in the way. Not now."

Taruru stared at him, somewhat awestruck. After a few moments of dead silence between the two, he laughed quietly to himself, shaking his head. He pulled away, letting Tororo drop his hands and just continued shaking his head.

"Alright...ALRIGHT! I get it. You want me to mind my own business right? Stay out of it? Fine." He said, smiling way more than he should have been at this point. "You wanna go back and build some fucking arms then? Go right ahead. I wont stop you. You're going to run yourself in to the ground though, you're gonna hit it hard. And you know what? I wont be there to pick up the pieces when you do. Not this time." He spat, almost making Tororo flinch at the pure anger in the words.

Tororo refused to look up at Taruru now, keeping his eyes glued to the sidewalk they had been standing on. He heard Taruru muttering things to himself as he stormed away, not even giving Tororo a second glance.

That was probably what hurt Tororo the worst,


End file.
